Comparing the ant fauna in a tropical and a temperate forest canopy
Keywords:
Canopy, forest, ants, ecology, diversity, abundance, tropical, temperate, crane, comparative ecologyAbstract
We studied the diversity and abundance of the ant fauna in the canopy and on the ground of a temperate forest (Leipzig Auwald, Germany) and compared the results with those from a Neotropical forest (Surumoni, Venezuela), using similar sampling methods, aided by two identical cranes that gave us ample access to both canopies. The data suggest the presence of approximately four times less ant species in the canopy of the temperate forest compared to the tropical one. In the temperate forest, the relationship between the species richness and presence of ants on the ground versus that found in the canopy, differ to that in the tropics: In the forest at Surumoni, ants were more diverse and had a larger presence in the canopy than on the ground, whereas this was not the case in the Auwald at Leipzig. These preliminary results shows the potential gains to be collected from deeper studies in comparative ecology, assessing the relative biomass of the different components of the ecosystem in the tropics and in temperate environments.
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Copyright (c) 2007 Klaus Jaffe, Peter Horchler, Manfred Verhaagh, Cristina Gomez, Rene Sievert, Rodolfo Jaffe, Wilfried Morawetz (Autor/a)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
